Saturday, May 24, 2014

The Round Up

I will be off to visit with my family in Queens. I love spending time with my daughter. As I get older the time with my daughter means more to me. Oddly, I never seem to think of my own moments as a child.

It is memorial day and I am not doing the usual survivor tour. My older half brother was in the Navy and sometimes servicemen would want to retrace the events of an ordinary man. 9-11 is far enough away that the people signing up really don't seem to think about that much.

I want to thank those who served as well as the families who stayed at home while their loved ones served.
Some of us respect the traditions and honor that go with serving in the military.

I remember being in the South on Veterans day at the Golden Corral. I was with a few friends that served and felt embarrassed when vets thanked me for my service as a federal officer. I pointed out I don't carry a gun. They pointed out the nature of the work commands respect. It was a humbling experience.

There are those at work who claim the new mission is punishment. My opposition to one task is well known. Sadly, if this is a punishment I am enjoying it. I don't have to fix mistakes of people who boast about their work. The attorneys are not pleased because I am a popular guy and can be counted on for a fair hearing.
Peers that are burned out are annoyed because I don't have to interview unless it is an emergency. I can stay in my office get cases done and listen to SURF music. I actually enjoy interviewing, but that aggressive format is not for me. Also you get to see who does what in that format and not seeing the work of your peers is best.

Right now I am in the infrastructure phase.

Enjoy the holiday

Monday is Guyana independence day as well as the birthday of John Wayne and James Arness.

A scale of 1-10 will be fine. Pol Pot being 10 and say Obama, is, what, a 2 or 3? I mean he has been responsible for some pretty criminal acts. Assassination of he who shall not be named, without trial (who cares), drone attacks that (accidentally)kill many many civilians (who cares), etc.. So perhaps he's more like a 4 or even a 5. Maybe 6. Hard to judge when it comes to killin'. (Just thought of Clint Eastwood. Sounds like something he'd say, you know, "...when it comes to killin'." That is his real name. Marion liked killin' Injuns, didn't he?). Ok, 7. One can get to 8,9, and 10 pretty quickly as the killin' gets ramped up. Exponential like.

What about the great and glorious Reagan? He was a commie, wasn't he? You use the term so flippantly and loosely it's hard to get a handle on any definition. If it's anybody who even steps to the left, even while dancing, I guess Reagan would qualify, but otherwise perhaps he doesn't. Still interested in where you rate the murdering son of a bitch though, next to Pol, and all the other great killers of the twentieth century.

Haven't forgotten anything Beak. Just interested in where you sit on those dudes. You know, given your nuanced stance and subtle arguments regarding the "left" and your obsession with anti-semtism, which is equally nuanced and subtle!

Sorry Bleak, but I don't see no real difference between ruddy republican and damn democratic. Obama got ticked off by the same dudes who ticked off on Bush.

You know that, everyone knows that. We all know they don't care a hoot about, well, even you Bleak. Just keep that ball a rollin' and those profits comin' in. The Market and the Economy are living things that needs looking after. Keep up your good fight Bleak, you hard working unit you!

It's useful to mention a moral principle that's so trivial it's embarrassing - the reason for doing so is it's near universally disregarded. It's easy (and not even gratifying) to criticise and condemn the crimes of others. It's a little harder to look in the mirror and ask what we're doing because it's usually not very pretty, and if we're minimally decent we're going to try to do something about it. When we do, depending on where you are in the world the problems can vary. In some countries it can mean prison, brutal torture, or getting your brains blown out. In countries like ours its condemnation, the loss of job opportunities, or something mild by international standards. It's much harder than to just talk about how awful the other guy is. For example, there's a US literary genre developing with many books, articles and passionate discussions about a flaw in our character: 'We don't react properly to the crimes of others', and 'What's the matter with us that prevents us from doing this?' There are obviously much bigger problems - like why do we continue to participate in massive atrocities, repression, terror, but we don't do anything about it? But there's no literary genre on that. All of that shouldn't be necessary to say, but I've said it. Beginning with anti-Semitism.

In the US when I was growing up anti-Semitism was a severe problem. In the 1930's depression when my father finally had enough money to buy a second-hand car and could take the family on a trip to the mountains, if we wanted to stop at a motel we had to check it didn't have a sign saying 'Restricted'. 'Restricted' meant no Jews, so not for us; of course no Blacks. Even when I got to Harvard 50 years ago you could cut the anti-Semitism with a knife. There was almost no Jewish faculty. I think the first Jewish maths professor was appointed while I was there in the early '50s. One of the reasons MIT (where I now am) became a great university is because a lot of people who went on to become academic stars couldn't get jobs at Harvard-so they came to the engineering school down the street. Just 30 years ago (1960s) when my wife and I had young children, we decided to move to a Boston suburb (we couldn't afford the rents near Cambridge any longer). We asked a real estate agent about one town we were interested in, he told us: 'Well, you wouldn't be happy there.' Meaning they don't allow Jews. It's not like sending people to concentration and termination camps but that's anti-Semitism. That was almost completely national. By now Jews in the US are the most privileged and influential part of the population. You find occasional instances of anti-Semitism but they are marginal. There's plenty of racism, but it's directed against Blacks, Latinos, Arabs are targets of enormous racism, and those problems are real. Anti-Semitism is no longer a problem, fortunately. It's raised, but it's raised because privileged people want to make sure they have total control, not just 98% control. That's why anti-Semitism is becoming an issue. Not because of the threat of anti-Semitism; they want to make sure there's no critical look at the policies the US (and they themselves) support in the Middle East. With regard to anti-Semitism, the distinguished Israeli statesman Abba Eban pointed out the main task of Israeli propaganda (they would call it exclamation, what's called 'propaganda' when others do it) is to make it clear to the world there's no difference between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. By anti-Zionism he meant criticisms of the current policies of the State of Israel. So there's no difference between criticism of policies of the State of Israel and anti-Semitism, because if he can establish 'that' then he can undercut all criticism by invoking the Nazis and that will silence people. We should bear it in mind when there's talk in the US about anti-Semitism.

About Me

I am a Rudy Republican . The
peril of being a moderate is
that at times you get hit from
both sides. Some say I am at the edge of the great GOP tent. Radical leftists call me a rightwing extreemist.Yet in the end all we can ever be
is ourselves.